March, Wednesday 25th, 2048

I was starting to think of expanding. As nice and cozy as my shelter-workshop-apartment was, it was also starting to feel a bit limiting. For instance, my Assembler could print approximately forty kilograms of steel or ten kilograms of explosives per hour.

That was fine for making a few crates of mortar grenades overnight, but building something like a ten ton tank? Build time would be over ten days, assuming mostly steel as material and using 100% of the printer time for that one project. I would also have to puzzle it together from relatively small parts because my assembler could not make the hull in one piece. Its work area was much too small.

Blueprints for higher tier fabricators were prohibitively expensive for now, with five-digit prices in Class II. It was either build a larger base with a whole bunch of assemblers, or capture more Macks.

The Type Three was already a sort of mobile fabricator. Upgrading existing Threes to have the build capabilities of the Assembler Mark II seemed feasible. With different modifications, I saw potential as a personal vehicle too. Now, how to acquire some outside of waiting for the next emergence?

April, Friday 3rd, 2048

An opportunity presented itself.

From an emergence two years ago, someone had an old Type Three lying around that had been disabled by destroying the eye, much like the one I had owned for a few days.

The owner had wanted to make it into a wood harvester, but abysmally failed with the project. Now he was willing to give it away cheaply. Why HANAF had not gone after that one was beyond me. After a visit to check it out, I purchased it and paid him to deliver it to a large garage I had rented not too far from my shelter.

The first thing I did was to paint the Canadian flag on it. That should indicate that it was under friendly control. Now I did not expect trouble as long as it appeared dead. There had been people tinkering with Mack wreckage for years. Once my Mack started moving that might change though.

Second, wire it up properly, in more than one way. External power connectors, some data connection for Elya to access and more.

Third, try if the reactor and the fabricator still work. The results were mixed, but the problems seemed solvable. In particular, upgrading the fabricator to an Assembler Mark II looked doable.

The following two weeks were busy with modifying the Mack. I had underestimated the effort, and just changing the design and building the whole thing from scratch might have been easier. But I was stubborn and eventually got it working. Arms, hands and mouth were slightly smaller than in the original version, and some hoses and cabling were rerouted. All of that to free up space for a cockpit.

Next, some decent materials. I asked Elya “I need some robust materials for the cockpit, especially the windows. They have to be printable with my current fabber. Suggestions?”

Item

Point Cost

Description

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Class I Advanced Materials

50

Catalog

Breakage resistant Lonsdaleite, transparent

20

A form of diamond, with special microscale structures added to stop the spread of cracks

(Unlock for Matter Reconfiguration Machines)

2-dimensionally oriented UHMWPE foil, transparent

5

Useful for laminate glass and similar materials

(Unlock for Matter Reconfiguration Machines)

Polycrystallite (transparent)

5

Ultra high strength glue for most materials

(Unlock for Matter Reconfiguration Machines)

Polycrystallite based paint (various colors, mixable)

5

Scratch resistant, durable paint

(Unlock for Matter Reconfiguration Machines)

Adding materials to the CAD software in Lorekeeper Tome of Mechanical Engineering

Freebie

Some of the materials are technically Class 0, but still a step above the simple materials that come unlocked for free with the fabricator. I’m throwing in some technical know-how on how to put things together.

“Yes, let's get all of those.”

Purchased: various material unlocks

New balance… One Token and 235 points.

Next came a design session for a small, two seat (side by side) cockpit in the Mack. To operate the arms and legs simultaneously it had controls to stick my arms and feet in, as I did not have a full Creation Engine to manufacture augs yet.

And because why not, I did a final upgrade upscaling the leg servos. It could now do a sustained speed of fifteen kilometers per hour and forty-five in short sprints. With that speed, the Type Three at the school two months ago might have gotten me.

May, Saturday 2nd, 2048

I was bored. The last excitement I had was four days ago, when I did a late night test run around the neighborhood with my Mack. Elya had disabled video surveillance nearby, but it was always possible that a neighbor would wake up and look out the window.. Guilty pleasures…

So I came up with a particularly hair-raising idea. An infantry force made of Macks built by me. But first I had to revise the design of the critters a bit. For instance, their radio networking sucked. I wanted to equip them with something better, and I had 535 points at the moment.

“Elya, I need some comm equipment to fit my Macks with. And maybe future units. What is best suited for general purpose communication at the tactical level? Let's say ranges of at least a few kilometers.”

Normally, I would recommend point-to point communicators with hyperspatially paired quantum dots. Unfortunately that is not within the capabilities of your Assembler Mark II. A simple possibility would be adapting the data link in your Spectracopter for installation in a Type One. The Type Four would be more difficult as it is mostly covered in metal, which would get in the way of the radio waves.

“Um, point cost?”

Freebie. You already have the Spectracopter design, extracting and reusing components for other designs is something I may do without further charge.

“Sounds good”. We put together a design that could work with the Spectracopter as a relay station and give Elya and me a good tactical overview. On top of that, the newly designed scout units would be able to get into buildings and still keep their data links up, unless they went deep into some megabuilding.

I printed four Type 1R (for Radio) units and an extra Type 4. Some of the original Type 1 I had captured before received colorful ornamentation, from zebra stripes to a Coat of Arms for the “Vanguard Command” I made up with some prompting by Elya. Strangely enough, I had the impression that she enjoyed it.

Finally, I made one special unit: A Pseudo-Type Four with flimsy “armor”, but a large shaped charge inside. It was time to revisit the concept of the anti-tank dog.